Fernando Zúñiga


Fernando Zúñiga is a Chilean-born Swiss linguist at the University of Bern, where he held the chair of General Linguistics from February, 2013 until January, 2024; after retiring for health reasons, he became an associate researcher at the Institute of Linguistics. He works in the fields of linguistic typology and indigenous languages of the Americas, especially Mapudungun and Algonquian languages.
He was elected as a member of the Academia Europaea in 2018.

Partial bibliography

Mapudungun, Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2000 Deixis and Alignment. Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006, Mapudungun: el habla mapuche. Introducción a la lengua mapuche, con notas comparativas y un CD, Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Públicos, 2006, Benefactives and Malefactives. Typological perspectives and case studies, co-edited with Seppo Kittilä, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010, Word Formation in South American Languages, co-edited with Swintha Danielsen and Katja Hannss, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2014, Advances in Research on Semantic Roles, co-edited with Seppo Kittilä, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2016, Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony, co-edited with Sonia Cristofaro, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2017, Grammatical Voice, co-authored with Seppo Kittilä, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, Mapudungun: el habla mapuche. Introducción a la lengua mapuche, con notas comparativas y audio, Santiago de Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica / Centro de Estudios Públicos, 2022, Applicative constructions in the world's languages, co-edited with Denis Creissels, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024,